librarypunk - 013 - Anarchivists

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

This week we’re joined by Mark Matienzo to talk about archives access, mousework, digitization gig economics, and skin suits. Mark’s Sourcery post: https://matienzo.org/2021/on-sourcery-or-the-enclosure-of-remote-access/  Caswell/Cifor article Mark mentions: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/687705/pdf  Mark’s Twitter: @anarchivist  Mark’s Bandcamp: https://blacktent.bandcamp.com 

Welcome to Library Punk. There's only 150 more days to Halloween. I'm Justin. I'm a Skalkham librarian. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I'm an IT administrator. At a public library, my pronouns are she and they. I'm Jay. I'm a metadata librarian, and my pronouns are he, him. I'm Carrie. I'm an academic health sciences library, and my pronouns are she, her. And we have a guest. Hello. I'm Mark Modhi. Anzo, and I am a middle manager, sometime archivist, and an ambient musician.

My pronouns, are they them? Welcome. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. Thanks. You have successfully petitioned to be a library punk guest. I just have to say it's really, really difficult to make such a request, apparently. It's a, you know, it's a good backlog.

It's an exclusive club. feel very, I have to say, archivists know a thing or two about backlogs. So I feel. Arthur decides who our guests are. Well, I'm glad I passed muster. So. You said, Arthur.

You're the most mustard. I'm glad I'm not the only one who makes that show. I live in Wisconsin. This is the land of mustard. I love a good mustard. I unfortunately don't. I appreciate that about you anyhow. Thanks.

You're valid, Carrie. Yeah. Feeling very attacked right now. Yeah. That'll happen. So we have a recurring segment on the show. I figured we could do that to warm up. It is, what's wrong at ALA?

Barack Obama is everyone's husbando. And that's why, that's my theory as to why he's going to be keynoting at ALA's conference. is it's just a classic scent move. I mean, we're basically an Obama 2.0 presidency. Hey, mediocre white centrist liberal ladies love Obama. He is the only acceptable black man. Oh, man. We had Michelle, because that was the year I was an emerging leader.

It was like her and she did that little thing with Carla Hayden. Oh? Yeah. Yeah. So ALA 1. Obama seems a weird choice. I. He writes books.

Yeah, but like, why now? Yeah. He's probably got another book. It's the Springsteen. Oh, the Springsteen podcast. That's right. Or a Biden bridge. Oh, is he going to be a surprise guest?

Just shows up. Hey, Jack. Wait, wasn't his, wasn't Jill Biden at something? Come on, yeah. Come on, man. Yeah, no, Jill Biden. Jill. Oh, Dr. Biden.

That's the one I want to see at something. No, she was at, she keynoted at ACRL, didn't she? I don't know. I haven't been to a conference in, you know, a while that I haven't presented at, and then I didn't go to any other sessions at the things I've presented at in the past year. What is a conference? That's the way to do it, Jay-Dow. I went to code for a lib last year, and then, yeah, yeah, it's like I've done some, like,

I did smirk, which if you Googled it, the first thing that came up, at least on duck. Go was a rope conference, and I was like, I want to go to that one, which led to me, you know, us. in our porn episode, I think it was, there may be an episode before that being like, what if we did some sort of library presentation at like a bondage conference? That would fucking rule. But, you know, I didn't go to any other presentations at that conference. Sorry, Smirk.

I'll, you know, thank you for letting me present it at your conference. Not the rope one, the institutional repository one, sadly. The institutional rope repository. Leather archives, call me, please. Are we friends with the leather archives? Desperate to get their attention. Call us. Please.

I keep tweeting at them. I see that. If we just be, if I, if I just be horny on Maine on this podcast enough, it'll happen eventually. We'll count on. I support that. It's a, you know, it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. I have leather interior in my card. That's got to do something.

Don't let any of the. The Twitter children hear that. They'll get mad and won't let your car near your children. They won't let your car at Pride, Carrie. I hate parades. So there you go. It's fine. You'll just, like, I'm not going to go to a parade anyway.

Just your car. I had my first anxiety attack at a parade. Oh, geez. That makes sense. Like, yeah. Yeah. I've been in a lot of parades. I haven't been to a lot of parades, though.

I went to Seattle. I've been in more trades. If you've been in them, that means you've been too much. Yeah, but I've participated in them more than I've observed them. Oh, okay. Yeah, like I was at the very front of the Salt Lake Pride in 2019, which was fun. Yeah. It's Pride Month.

Happy birthday. Yay. My blood pressure just spiked at that information. Like, I just imagined myself. Like, no. It ruled. Yeah. I'm glad you enjoyed that.

I'm glad people enjoy that. I love being the center of attention. Don't you know this about me yet? For pride, they got former president Barack Obama to keynote. I love. Well, you know he made gay marriage happen, right? Yep, he sure did. It wasn't the Supreme Court.

Is that what is, is that going to be his new memoir? Like, is that what he's coming to talk about at ALA? Because it's... I hope not. I hope so, actually. About how Barack Obama saved the gays because he made it okay for them to marry. And work at Raytheon.

Oh, yeah. I love the like Bethesda, like, all rainbow icons, except for the countries where they don't like that. Yeah, that's all it's fun. I did like that. God, I love Pride Month. It's so shitty. I don't know.

What about the gay cops? Well, we had the gay helicopter, the literal gay attack helicopter. What about the, what about the due crimes part of the beginning? I mean, the, Like, no, can't get pride kids probably love the pride cops. Or hate crimes.

This is the U.S., so we've got a pretty good handle on hate crimes, especially when it comes to cops. It's synonymous, yeah. So anyway, I did absolutely no research on what he's going to present on, but I assume it's just him deepening his. Well, we usually don't know. I'm sure it's a generic motivational speech to the white liberal audience that he will undoubtedly be told. All those nice white ladies. Like Michelle's, yeah, Michelle's was she did like a little sit down interview with Carla Hayden. I remember.

Like she did like her little keynote and then it was like a cue and like a talk between the two of them. Which was like nice. And I think Michelle just said like a book was about to come out or something when she did the keynote. And I remember 2017. like there was like the surprise like closing speaker was Hillary and I was like yeah fuck that she jump out of a cake I think so

like singing in the rain style it was a it was a pantsuit cake singing in the rain style and she just turns into Debbie Reynolds which that would be that would be awesome what if Debbie Reynolds was alive because Debbie Reynolds is dead yeah but if she was alive and then like did her little singing in the rain thing no but like if it was Debbie Reynolds ghost or Debbie Reynolds's dead body.

Spooky Debbie Reynolds? Hell yeah. 150 days of Halloween. It's a Debbie Reynolds skin suit. Only Hillary Rodden Clinton could do it. Okay, I'm ending this segment. Hi, guys, this is my flesh suit, and then she damp. Watch Hillary Whip and Ne-Day.

Oh, God. As Debbie Reynolds. As Debbie Reynolds. In Debbie Reynolds's actual flesh suit. Yeah. Thanks for that. That's just, this is what library is like, right? Stuff of nightmares.

Come check me out in the ProQuest Boots. You've all seen the Necro pants, right? The what? No. The skin pants that are used for necromancy. Oh, no, I have. I have, yeah. I want skin pants.

No, you really don't. Will that get us friends with the Lerkerker? Do they look good at least? The Lesser Archives. Are they aesthetically pleasing? If they're aesthetically pleasing, I'll go full. like Buffalo Bill. I don't give a fuck. No, they are literal skin pants.

Like, I'd fuck me. Like, come on. Hang on. I'm putting it in the Discord. I want to get Jay's live reaction. Okay. Let me open Discord then. That might be a good thing to do. I knocked my phone off my couch, so, you know, R-I-P phone. Those are hot. Let me look. Oh, nice. I like the, like, weird codpiece.

Yeah, I'd wear that. That's not a codpiece. Oh, that's just a dick. Okay. I like the hair Yeah, no, I'd fuck those Like, I'd fuck around in those I'd fuck those. I'd fuck those fans I'd fuck me

I'd fuck those pants I'm deleting that I don't want to look at it anymore Why? Archival record, Justin I don't care Yeah, let's talk about Yeah, to bring it back on topic

Stop misbehaving On this podcast There we go Do you have any skin books in your archive? that you've ever worked in Well, no Not that I'm aware of Yeah, just good animal skin

You should fix that Lots of hair Lots of teeth What about the combination thereof Into a flesh wad A.k.a. What is it called? It's a type of cyst

The thing that scarred me as a child At the Museum of Science and Industry Epidermoid cyst We have alien abduction stuff here at the University of New Hampshire which is really cool. Yeah, I worked in a place where there was once like a

whole series of one specific collection that was all about I think it was like interacting with one specific sort of extraterrestrial being, sort of godlike preacher, and it was one of our most heavily used collections. Yeah, our like special collections librarian

Bill who's great. He's retiring and I'm sad about that. But like, because we have like the, I think it's the Betty Hill. Probably not, that's probably not the name. It's like this lady and her husband were abducted by aliens in like the 50s or something here in New Hampshire. And so we have like the collection of like all of the like art done about it and their personal papers and stuff like that. Like in our special collections. And so one of the like the little permanent exhibit cabinets within the special collections at the New of New Hampshire is the little alien abduction one. And Bill is so fucking sick of it.

Like he's like tired of talking about aliens. He just wants to talk about the traditional dance collection, which like I don't blame him. It's pretty cool. And we have a lot of Chaucer stuff too weirdly. I'm like, hell yeah. But no, people just want to know about the aliens. Do you think there are aliens that are into traditional dance? I hope so. Is this an opportunity to like think about expanding or collecting areas? Oh, I'll have to like bug him. I see a paper opportunity to help me get tenure. Or a zine. Because he's got, you know, he's got some good publications under his belt and has been, like,

interviewed by, like, you know, those, like, alien shows before because he's our special collections person. So I think he's been on TV before. He's fun. Shout out, Bill, if you're listening. Probably not. But, you know, who knows? They do like abducting cows and hanging out in fields.

So I think traditional dance is, like, right up there with interests. Yeah, New England, it is a different culture I am learning. I'm always living in rural areas. So, Mark, you sent us several blog posts, articles that you put together about archives and archival labor. And I wanted to talk the one, I think that was the lengthiest that you sent us, was about the process. So since we're in COVID now, reading rooms are closed and people need to get access to collections. because they are in graduate school and they're not going to be able to keep paying

for graduate school forever, so they need sources and they need access. And so a lot of people are doing scans and creating little temporal collections. And then comes a brain genius with an idea of, I know these people, you actually know these people. I'm just saying this is a

galaxy brain idea. To turn this process into Uber, or just Fiver. So I was reading it, And it's called sorcery, which is, that's cleverish, but it's kind of like a joke on a fridge. You wouldn't want to look at it every day because then you're sick of it. I don't know why I'm bashing the name that much. But it's basically Fiverr for archives.

And it took me a while because I thought for a moment that this was just going to be all volunteer labor. But no, so a researcher pays someone with access to the local archives to go in and take shitty photos on their phone. or I guess they could use the scanners to send it. And they get paid by the researcher to do this. And step two, question marks, step three, profit. Is that a fair proceed? For whom? Profit for whom?

It's not for profit, so it's good. Follow the money. So I think part of this is that, you know, sorcery is really interesting to me. I think for a lot of reasons. And part of that is that, you know, specifically my sort of the way that my career is kind of, you know, sort of a brief sort of personal aside is my career sort of started out in cataloging that I moved into archives. And I have like a lot of people been, you know, pretty severely impacted by student debt and working in contingent labor. I moved into my current position My current position is now permanent

but I moved across the country as somebody at the time in my late 30s to take a contingent position and paid really well. It was a calculated risk but I could do that. But I think what I'm starting to see and the reason why sorcery gives me

so much pause in particular is that I think there is a I recognize that the pandemic has had a very material impact on a lot of people. And that, you know, if I'm being generous, part of who that has material impact on is not just library and archives workers, but also graduate students. It impacts their ability to move their studies forward or early career researchers. But there seems to be this sort of mismatch or lack of understanding. Like the reason why sorcery feels like a particular threat to me, you know, despite its pedigree, like it comes from the Corporation for Digital Scholarship, which develops Sotero,

Trophy, and Omecca. Like these are all great open source tools that are becoming really important for research, to support publication, to support scholarly communication. but sorcery somehow feels different. And part of the reason why sorcery feels different is because it represents a potential to sort of further the reality that lots of archives programs in particular

are really profoundly impacted by austerity. I think there's a legacy of austerity that particularly impacts public academic institutions and archives. And because of that, it feels like this is sort of a this is a service that's been developed from a researcher perspective to go around the perceived inefficiencies

of archives and special collections which sort of belies the reality that a lot of these programs are pretty radically underfunded or continue to you know and you know if you Google you if you Google who I am you see where I work but like there are large R1 private institutions that look like they have more money than you could think. But structurally, a lot of this infrastructure and the labor that supports this infrastructure is totally underfunded.

Yeah, they're like basically schools that are Ponzi schemes. Like, right? They have these like big flashy things going on, right? But no structure to support them. Like there are a lot of what we would call technically underfunded R1s. Yeah. So UNH became an R1. a few years ago. But because New Hampshire's like a libertarian state, it like gives zero money to the university. So even though technically I work at like the state university public in my state, it's functionally a private university and therefore kind of like relies on tuition and like donor money and stuff. And then they just did like the Huron report. I don't know if you know about the Huron bullshit. And the library was the only college targeted in the first run. And so our already dwindling

budget, they made us reduced by like a few million dollars. And so yeah, it's like, UNH is an R1 university technically. And the library like can barely do what it needs to do because we just like don't have the money to do it. So it's like you can't just be like, oh, they're an R1. They have the means to do that. And a lot of, this is a pretty common story across libraries at either private, you know, some private R1s and also some public R1s, depending on the state that you're in. Yeah. So, so it's, that's, that's basically it. And why this kind of got my hackles up is that, you know, I think it, they, the rhetoric that sorcery uses is, you know, it's about democratizing access and, well, democratizing access for whom and at, at what cost. you know, it's, and there, you know, there's, I think there's a, what gives me, you know, sort of additional concerns about this is that, you know, they are starting to think about

sorcery as a platform, specifically as a platform, which is like maybe another area that we want to dig into a little bit, but a platform for institutions to sort of use for fulfillment. They're not, they're also not aware of necessarily of the systems that are in place, in special collections to manage request cues and all the stuff. So, you know, my work is really focused a lot on sort of discovery and fulfillment processes for archives. And this is sort of this end run around, like, what, you know, I've been trying to fight for for my career for under less than ideal circumstances at a number of places. And what a lot of other places, you know, this sort of ties into this, like, desire from, you know, researchers that's like, well, why can't archives digitize

everything. And I think as librarians even, we know that there's, that's not feasible for any number of reasons. So, so part of this is like, okay, sorcery is something, it's an interesting idea. It speaks to a real need. It speaks to an infrastructural gap, but it also, I don't know, it doesn't address the material conditions of the labor and infrastructure that we're trying to build. Yeah, that's something I was going to ask in that like, because I know normally at the end of the podcast we do are, you know, fully automated luxury, gay, space communism question thing. But one thing that, like, sorcery brings up to me, and it reminds me of just like the gig economy in general, is that like, we don't want to have to live in a world or an economy that requires a

gig economy, but we do. And so it's like, you know, we don't like, you know, sorcery doesn't seem like it's, you know, what we need or what we want or that it addresses anything. But, but, But can we sort of exist without it right now? Like ideologically, it's not what we want or need. But can we help that right now? Like, is the fighting against it? Like, can we actually feasibly do that right now in the ecosystem that we're in? I'm always so conflicted about stuff like this.

Like, I'm really glad to see that, was it in New York? They developed like a co-op replacement for Uber, where it's still like a gig economy thing, but it's actually owned by the drivers. So it's like, yeah, we can't escape the gig economy, but at least it's the people actually doing it who are in control of it. So yeah, I'm always so conflicted about like, yeah,

we don't like this thing, but, you know, it's meeting a need and how else do we meet that need right now? I mean, it's funny because it's like, I think a lot of places are trying to meet, a lot of archives are trying to meet this need by trying to advocate to get the resources, that they need to do to build these programs. Totally, yeah.

Yeah. So yeah. So there's like an interesting like wrinkle here where it's like, yeah, archives can do it, but like there is a decades long legacy of underfunding archives programs. And I talked a little, and when in the blog post that Justin talked about about sorcery, I talk about this Levy report, the Society of American Archivist, put out in 1983. 1983. And, you know, that was already building on the, you know, the archives profession in the United States is still pretty new.

But at that point, you know, this report that came out nearly 40 years ago, it's like there was an awareness nearly 40 years ago that programs were structurally underfunded. So, so I don't know. It's this, I can, sure, I can imagine a future. And I think it's, you know, if I'm being generous to the CDS and Greenhouse Studios folks about sorcery, it is, yeah, yeah, the fact that it's not a private sector company that's doing that. Building sorcery, sure, I feel good about it. But it's also, you know, I think the plenary session from CNI that I talk about in the blog post where that, you know, this sort of panel about sorcery, you know, really sort of it raised a lot of other problematic issues. It's like, are people being expected to monetize their credentials for access? And in my post, I talked a little bit about there are still archives with incredibly restrictive and, in fact, incredibly racist policies regarding access. So if, you know, you have a system that is, you know, sort of predisposed to academic researchers working towards a particular set of milestones, like, is this really going to democratize action? access in the way that we expect.

Right. Like one thing when I was looking through the notes, and I was like, oh, I have to ask you about this if we have the time regarding access. Have you seen the documentary three identical strangers? No, I haven't. Any of you? It's very good. It's about this study that was done on these triplets that were separated at birth as part of

this huge experiment about like nature versus nurture. like before IRB was a thing and this is like why we like have IRB because it's the most unethical study like it's terrible and I forget which library has the like papers of this but um whoever like donated the papers or something they're supposed to be like not accessible until whatever year even yeah sealed documents is a huge hitch and yeah i've worked at institution well i worked at an institution with a sound recording of the Hyatt Regency collapse from the band that played and it's a sealed unprocessed file, right? Yeah, it's...

Only the people who worked there knew it existed. I probably shouldn't be saying this on there, but it's not a big thing. It's actually a lot of people know it exists. But like, but yeah, there's an audio recording of like a major architectural, like, engineering disaster and people dying. And like that is definitely an instance of things that like if a person knew it existed, that sort of thing could happen or like, you know, sealed files and things like that. Like I worked at an institution with a whole sealed file on, you know, one of the founders of

the schools and things like that. Before we move on to access, I want to talk about sorcery sort of the issues with the very problem that are also, with the problem that's trying to solve that are still structural. So like archives are incredibly labor intensive. Most archives are dark archives. They're not fully processed. So I can even start on digitizing. But there's also issues here I'm seeing,

because a paper just came out from one of my colleagues at UNT talking about this exact problem. How do we get materials to people during COVID? What's the process? And you've got copyright issues, right? Because how do you know what's in copyright and what's not in copyright? And one of the issues is, which was completely

to me, and I've been talking about copyright for a long time, is that if you have restrictive access, the copyright, the 108 section like I does not cover you for exemptions as an archive if you're not open to the public. So the whole premise is that you're leveraging your access to a closed archive, but then that means that the archive is now liable because they're actually not allowed to allow. specifically says like photographs and phonographic records and stuff like that. So it's just a lot of logistical problems to go to Jay's question of like why be against it now.

It's just because it's going to be a waste of resources and attention. Carrie muted. Yeah, there's a lot of logistical issues with that. I actually started out my career in archives, fun fact. and I worked with a lot of my very first ever practicum project was on a digital archive where I was trying to source materials to digitize for a project and ran into just huge problems, just trying to find artifacts to digitize from historical societies and things like that because they were closed archives.

And because of, you know, I see so many situations where you take someone like a vulnerable student worker or something like that. A more affluent, you know, researcher or academic offers an exploitive sum of money for access. Student risks their job, their credentials, their livelihood to provide access. And, you know, it's really ripe for exploitation based on this, you know, what is sorcery kind of thing because of just what I experienced early on in my career. And part of why I got out of archives, too, is because, you know, fuck closed archives and things like that. But I mean, some things are closed for a very good reason, but also just kind of like the maneuvering. And also I hated explaining it to people. And I also just hated the work behind it.

Like some of the things you were alluding to and some of you're writing about like the ghostly nature of it. It's like I'm enough of a ghost as it is. Like I don't need to add to my ghostliness. Right. So now I think we can go on to access policies because it's not just closed issues, right? like accessibility, like reading room policies, like if you have a child, you know, if you need separate space. So one of my questions was, what can we start doing now to make archives actually more democratically accessible? Yeah, because I think its existence does speak to some of the problems we have with archives, which is they're not accessible to you for a lot of reasons. Yeah, I mean, I think there have been a lot of really great examples, you know, both

I would say in community archives and institutional archives about literally bringing records out of the reading room into communities or in some cases like external programming that focuses on this engagement. But I think this is one of those cases where I feel like because archives is this kind of different professional niche than even I think a lot of forms of librarianship, archivists don't always have the benefit of like conversations with like public services staff

in libraries like thinking about like you know how do you support someone like a patron in a public library setting that may be you know you know maybe doing something unsafe in a way where you're not going to call the freaking cops on them right archivists don't think in this way because we are we are ingrained to think about the sanctity of the collections or the sanctity of the reading room as a particular kind of hierarchical space. So part of this is really like, you know, it's killing the archivist in your head, kind of like.

And to taking, you know, I think it's taking a step back and saying, why do we have these policies? I think there have been some really great there's been some great work. I think it's a group in RBMS has been looking at abolition and special collections, particularly from the standpoint of reading room policies. This is not a work that I'm involved in directly, but they've been doing a lot of great work thinking about this.

But part of this is to really kind of, as you have, as the rest of your organization reevaluates your access policies, particularly if you say like you're a public R1 or R2 where you have some sort of public serving mandate, you know, you need to let your local citizenry into your building to get access. I don't have a situation where that's the case. It has made a little bit more, and this has made more complicated by the fact that I work remotely now. But we have, you know, I've been trying to sort of at my institution and other institutions

slowly suggest we do really need to take a holistic look at our access policies, both in terms of what we allow, in terms of how we, what we ask of people to provide in part because, you know, I don't think we realize what we're asking people to do or what we're asking people to set aside. So part of it is is really unpacking like how fucked up our policies are to begin with. Yeah, like one thing that I researched a lot when I was writing my thesis was things like Mukatu. Because like knowledge, organization, and access, because I feel like, especially in, you know, I don't know about international, like, library programs and I did not take a single archives class. I only took like metadata courses, basically, but not in any sort of special collections or archives context. but there's this like information wants to be free kind of thing like everyone should have access to everything and like at the top of your head it's like yeah everyone should have access to everything um but i know a lot of like especially indigenous cultures that is not the case at all like knowledge and information is protected and that goes against a lot of our more like western ethos with knowledge access um i know in new zealand in order to be registered as like a professional librarian

you have to like map your competencies against like one of the competencies you have to map yourself against is um the like knowledge organization and classification and intellectual property of like the maury um which i'm like yeah why aren't we all doing that um but there's this like idea of like with access policies it's like i'm an anarchist and so it's like you know hierarchy bad except where it's justified um and it's like power is, you know, it needs to be justified. Like, why do we have these maybe restrictions here? So sometimes, like, I want to push back against this idea that, like, access policies should always be completely open. Because I think that, like, that comes from a very idea of, like, everyone should have access to every information that's out there possible, ever, ignoring that some things do need to be hidden. And so with access policies, I think if we're revisiting access policies, it's, it can be kind of difficult to think, like, well, how do we make this more democratic and how do we make this more accessible while respecting that some of this, like, to put it kind of lonely gatekeeping, is there for a reason and a justified reason.

So I don't know if you had any thoughts about that, about like actually having justified restrictions and stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think there, so there's a couple of things to unpack there. And Jay, while you were talking, I think part of what I'm realizing is there it's probably important to distinguish between access policies that relate to specific collections or kind of specific collecting areas. So you're talking, you know, so for example, you're talking specifically about indigenous knowledge or records that, you know, may just even describe indigenous people. And I think there is a, you know, so there's the access policies that relate to the materials themselves and they relate to sort of the people described in the records potentially. And, you know, even in a more, I think, Western or legalistic setting, a lot of archives are pretty risk-averse. Like we have to be concerned about, you know, federal policies like FERPA and HIPAA in some of our records.

Yeah, those are good points, yeah. So I think part of it is, you know, the work, like in this recent keynote that I gave at SEA, a lot of the work and a lot of my thinking on this has really been influenced by Michelle Caswell and Marika C4. And specifically, like, they talk about these notions of effective responsibilities. And part of this is it's effective responsibilities to people or groups that, that are described or have some relationship to the records. But I think when I was starting about this,

I was really talking about access policies in terms of access to space and services. And as distinct from, like, you know, there may be distinct sort of, you know, restrictions or like sort of things that you need to navigate in order to use or do research in a particular collection. Because like for me, I don't want to say it's necessarily easier to navigate those restrictions from a collection level basis.

But we are, you know, archives, I think, are pretty, I don't want to sort of be totally reductive about this, but I think they're pretty familiar with being able to kind of, you know, you have like a collection donor that says, well, I don't want people to cite this without this. And, you know, maybe it's because you're holding hope that that donor will give you money, or maybe it's an important relationship, or maybe it's, you know, because they're records of a queer activist and they don't want publications about their birth family,

you know, for whatever reason. We, you know, archives are somewhat used to navigating that, but I think it's, for me, it is part of this, how do we get beyond archives as collections and thinking about how archives constitute sort of, they're not just a mirror of society. They, like, I have this sort of very, very focused understanding of records as sort of instantiations of society, which is like a big

and kind of gnarly, gnarly like rabbit hole to go down. But for me, it's, it's about changing that notion of responsibility. And it's archives, how do we make special collections less special? Right. And it, that's, that's part of it. It's like they are, they're both important, but they also should be mundane. Yeah, they're a little too precious. Right. Exactly. And like how you're relating that to like it as a space. as well. That was one of the things that, so like, because I took all these, one of the things that I think I, that really turned me off of special collections and that I hated about my special collections classes was like, you know, when they'd pull out the stuff for classes and everyone would be like, can we touch it? Like, I had a professor who would be like, why the fuck do you want to touch everything? Like, he didn't say it in those words, but like, I think he liked me because I didn't like fetishize the objects, you know. I thought that art I also felt the same way that like a special collection should be mundane like and that was kind of what I took away from my education was that like if we do our job as archivists and special collections managers eventually like almost everything in the library is going to be like a special like the question is always about access like what should be archived exactly that's that should be your question is access and what shouldn't be in here. here. It's not about like the preciousness of the things. And I think that was the problem I always

had was this idea of the preciousness and how much the patronage of those spaces are always so attached to the preciousness of the things within them rather than using as the space as a space of curation as a space of exploration and mundaneness. Like one of my favorite things in our special collections at UWM is our collection of like queer disability zines. or like queer disability publications from the like from the there's like a lot of like queer publications and queer zines and like some of them are like overlap into queer disability zines that were published in Wisconsin in the 80s and 90s and they're like they're really cool but it's just like it's kind of mundane but it's really great because it's like dikes and

wheelchairs you know but it's just I love that kind of stuff I just want to see like someone named Sally's photocopies yeah it's like with like the historical record it's like if we think of like if we're going with this like archives our society it's like well because that's what we're choosing to preserve for the future right like what we're choosing as worthy to preserve and if we should make it all mundane right but it's not a full depiction of society though right because like it's all it's we we we we we we we we we we we're not able to do that because there's stuff that we've lost along the way right because totally of what has historically been collected in special collections and archives which is

largely white shit and has been described as largely white shit. So like... Like I remember seeing like a critique of the like history is the record of the victors or something and like people criticizing that because it was what like the Confederacy said about the civil war after the union one. And like how like you shouldn't use that phrase. I'm like, but it's not exactly wrong all the time though because what we choose to preserve is what we remember. Yeah, but also that you have to remember that like the Confederacy kept, well, the daughters of the Confederacy kept trying to rewrite their own history. Oh, exactly. Yeah. You know, history is just what we say it is sometimes. I mean, I'm not a historian. That's Justin.

I mean, I have a humble English BA. I have had pairs of underwear that have lasted longer than the Confederacy and I have not yet built any statues for them. We should, though. You should. I say we should start this kick. starter of like build statues to curious underwear. My first, my first pair of Patagonia barely there briefs. Let's raise the money to enshrano. I agree. Let's do it. They're good underwear.

Okay. They lasted seven years. There you go. Holy cow. That is pretty good for underwear. It's a really good pair of underwear. Yeah, salute. That's just my pitch for a good pair of Patagonia barely there.

Like underwear, archives deserve to be used, right? Absolutely. Amazing. I now want to see an article that's like talking about archives to like the metaphor of underwear. That sounds like tenure granting type of article right there. I don't think about archives, but I want to write that article now. It's a metaphor everybody can relate to, right? Exactly.

Who doesn't wear underwear? Unless we go to command. Yeah. Yeah. John Hamm just like, you know, swings hot. Like, thank God. Grace wet pants on John Han. Yeah, pickle in my mouth.

Yeah, pickle in my mouth. Hey, so speaking of what should be in the archives and what shouldn't be, you wanted to talk about sorceries of platforms. So like what should be in the digital archive or not, I think is a pretty essential question to this enterprise. Yeah, I mean, I think So the thing about archives that I think even a lot of librarians don't necessarily think about is that it's it's a process of selection.

Like they, you know, and I think this is again, this sort of ties back to like what I was saying is archives are not just a reflection of society and you know, I think they're, you know, Jay's point that there is this sort of recognition of, you know, history gets written because sources exist and certain narratives are valorized, right? But it doesn't mean that there's other histories that didn't happen. So I think when it comes to digital archives in thinking about digitization specifically, archivists have a duty to undertake selection, to undertake selection responsibly. Because the thing is, archivists really know that infinite resources don't exist. So for me, it's sort of like I'm trying to imagine.

imagine sort of like what a post-scarcity digital archives would look like. And it's really fucking hard. It's really fucking hard because like, you know, I know that like the internet archive likes to roll like storage is infinite, right? But shit is minimally curated. Is it archives? I don't know. I've gotten in pissing matches with people about whether IA's archives and with people.

And I'm less interested in that now. But the point is that in. order to provide access and in an order to construct meaning. Archives do really need this, like, the narrative aspect of archives is what makes them special and what makes them functional. And archivists need to engage with that narrativity. So, you know, part of that is understanding like the mundaneness and, you know, but serious impact of selection strategies on digitization. and there are cases where we're not going to be able to digitize everything. We're not going to be able to preserve everything.

And so we manage loss and we manage selection. Archivists are fucking great at dealing with grief, because they just realize that you can't keep everything and you will have lost stuff before it even came in the door. So I think my vision for what shouldn't be in the digital archives is it's like most things it's going to be really contextual. It really depends.

But when you're talking about, at least when you're talking about the stuff, when you're talking about the records themselves. I think at the same time, though, like if you're, you know, if you probe this and go a little bit more meta, like I think we need to be really mindful about how we build our systems.

You know, I think that's one of the things that my post on sorcery was trying to acknowledge. And, you know, there's a lot of interest in, especially lately, not just in the archives community, but I think more broadly about the potential impact of climate change on preservation, particularly on digital preservation. And I don't know how we can continue in good conscience to build archives platforms on cloud providers like AWS or like it just, it seems impossible. There's so much library stuff built on that.

Yeah, I was going to say like spring. share is AWS. Yeah. All the spring stuff is, oh, God, there's so much library stuff built on AWS is discussed. There's like an Amazon boycott. I'm like, yeah, but how deep are we going

with this boycott? Because at a certain point, you just can't use the internet anymore. Which is, which should be okay to you though, right? Yeah, exactly. Like, you should be able to just like not use the internet, but. Yeah, can we just like not use the internet on Amazon boycott days?

That'd be great. Like, that's doable for me. but I don't know about it all. International Touch Grass Day. Hell yeah. That should be Call and carry out. I've never smoked weed.

Definitely not right now. It's not. Lane's grass. I actually don't like weed. It doesn't make me feel good. LSD's fun, though. Highly recommend if you have ADHD. This is not a drug podcast.

Mike Tyson said it changes life after brain injury. What did? We did her LSD. Yeah, no, I had a lovely time the one time I did it. Highly recommend 10 out of 10. Yeah, it's actually really good for a head injury. Yeah, I've had a head injury. Maybe that's why I like it so much.

Probably. I only do legal things. Sorry. Totally. I hold hands, walk around the maypole, and listen to. to and listen to Christian. There's absolutely no occasion on this podcast.

I barbecue. Yeah. Very wholesome American pastime. You wear cargo shorts and flip-flops? Not cargo shorts, but I am wearing shorts and flip-flops. Like, but I also just don't know in Florida. So I'm still on vacation. My boyfriend's in Florida right now.

That's how everyone just dresses in Florida. I forgot how weird everyone dresses in Florida until I went back and I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah, I should ask him about people who are dressing. He's in Orlando right now, I think, or somewhere. He said earlier today that he was in the town that is the headquarters of Scientology. Yeah, also the city we're in is the global headquarters of Scientology. Yeah, so that's fun. Clearwater Beach.

For once, it's not Mormons. It's Scientology on our podcast. I mean, Scientology is more inclined to sue, so maybe step lightly. Yeah, Scientology's Space Mormon. Yeah, that's a good way of putting. But I think another documentary to recommend my Scientology movie. It's very good. Highly recommend.

Anyway. I've watched all the Scientology movies and documentaries. That documentary is so good. We'll do another one. When I do talk to people about digital preservation, I do say, you know, we're thinking on a timeline that you're just not thinking on. So when I'm thinking of digital preservation, I'm thinking, will the data center go underwater in the next couple hundred years?

Like, where is this backed up? So we have to think about that with like Dura Cloud. And we use, for instance, our digital backup is Chronopolis. And so that's backed up in different places across continental United States. That sounds like some Eldrit shit right there. I was just going to say, like, especially with AWS people, like, they forget that there are actual real physical places with real physical, like, needs, you know. The cloud is just someone else's server. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

So it's like, you know, you've got these. It's literally giant data centers. It's literally just a warehouse. I remember reading something about, like, I think it was somewhere in Texas. I think it was an Amazon data center where they were, like, demanding a certain amount of water for cooling purposes and, like, not having to pay for it, basically. So, you know, it does suck up a lot of stuff, even if it's not material in your space. And, yeah, like Justin said, with backups, you know, everything that you have on the, cloud is going to be backed up like three times elsewhere.

And then that, so it's not just one thing. It's pretty much the impact is going to be triple. Yeah, it's very irresponsible to only have your stuff backed up in, in one place. I mean, that's like a basic IT thing. Yeah, exactly. Local backup. Lots of copies. Keep shit safe.

Exactly. Unless it's your news. Unless it's your nudes. Make sure you take your tattoos out of your nudes, kids. Turn them into an. Oh god NFTs I hope that collapses soon

Nice fucking I'm just waiting for like Banksy to do some trolling with NFTs That would fucking rule And then I hope it's done Like I want Banksy to do something with it And then I want it to be done That seems inevitable

What if Banksy does it It will only get worse No I like Banksy a lot actually I didn't use to I'm sorry so does everyone else Yeah I know Like I remember there was like a big pushback

Against him for a while But I've actually grown to quite enjoy him, like, ideologically. But, yeah, fucking NFTs. Hate it. Nice fucking titties. But yeah, like, I know with, like, archive of our own, for instance, every single time they do their, like, a fun drive, because they're like a, you know, a nonprofit.

And everyone's like, why are you raising so much money? Why don't you put that money to something else? I'm like, do you know how much, like, servers cost? Like, all your fanfic doesn't just, like, live up in the ether. Like, it's on a server somewhere. And the archive of our own is, like, one of the largest, like, hosts of texts, like, on the internet internationally. Like, all that's somewhere physically. Like, people just don't realize that, like, the cloud is just someone else's server, like, all the time.

Yeah. Cloud could be. I mean, we should weren't, though. Yeah. I started to listen to the self-hosted podcast, which is pretty fun. I'm, like, getting very into, like, I want to self-host everything. Like, my boyfriend brought over a raspberry pie to play steam games on, and now I'm just like, I want to self-host everything. It's just like a virus in my system.

But now I'm just like, no, I don't trust anyone with anything in the cloud. I just want all my own shit here. That reminds me of a tweet I saw that was like, tell me you work in IT without telling me you work in IT. And the response was, yes, I would like to buy a dumb refrigerator. can I pay extra for there not to be an app? And it's very true. Once you get to a point of saturation, you're just like, I can't trust shit out there because one ISP fucking up is going to be, you know, fucked up for everybody, including me.

So I'm just going to do it all myself. And yeah, open source everything is how it ends up normally. Yeah, my dad worked for an internet company when I was growing up. So I'm just like, uh-uh, I don't trust shit. I have one of those like robot vacuums but it doesn't have an app it doesn't connect a Wi-Fi so it's not going to be a cop on me I mean it's not like it you know not there's nothing to cop about but you know mine's what you think Jay I got into it someone said it was like a security risk to have a Wi-Fi enabled Roomba and I was like I have a landlord he's been in my house like he knows where everything is like it's not really like I'm not worried about this robot going around my house knowing where the bedroom is yeah it's like I have a

Yeah, like there's that interesting. So to bring it back to Pride, there was this really good article that came out last year by Anna Valens, who is a trans sex worker, about the whole, like, kink in public sex at Pride discourse. And one of the things she brings up in it, and I forget who she interviewed about it, but like the fact that we all have like, well, you know, I don't, but like that so many people have like Alexa or like Siri, like that totally redefines what public. art watches. Means now. So like anytime you have sex, like your, your home is public now. You have sex in your home? A lot, actually. Sorry to brag on Maine. Jeez.

Yeah, no. But like, yeah, like the fact that like we have. Glad somebody's having sex. Yeah, no, I'm very glad about it. But yeah, I know, like, just like with all this privacy stuff. And like, you know, in libraries, like all the time at like ALA, I've seen like, oh, you're like Alexa as like something being like like whatever the new echo or whatever the fuck I don't have Alexa.

Apparently there's a new there's some new Amazon devices. I don't know if you've seen them. There's like a shot collar for your wrist to make you exercise. Oh no. I know there's the thing now we're like we'll share your internet with other people. I know at Code for Live 2020. Yeah. At Code for Live 2020, the last thing I did before quarantine.

Alison McCreena, shout out to Library Freedom Project. Her keynote for Code for Lib was about Amazon Ring. And like, if there's one Amazon ring in your city, your city can't be a sanctuary city, like, technically, because they, the cops have access to that. So, yeah, just like, you know, to bring it back, like, one of our first episodes was about privacy, I think. That totally redefines what public is. And I wonder, like, how that interacts with, like, archives access and stuff, like, the fact that just, like, we don't have privacy anymore. And this is completely redefined what public even means and what access even means.

Like archivists would put a ring on their archives. Oh, believe me. I know, I know some who totally fucking would. It's, which is, I think libraries would sign the right, the sign,

write the fuck up with it. Like, I, having known, like, I used to do a lot of project work for historical society and, like, one of the archivists there just,

like, wanted the archives there to be like a little boys club. Like that was the like him and his little crew of like adoring older ladies that would volunteer there. Like that's all we wanted it to be. And I mean that kind of attitude really pervades some spaces for sure. I wonder if like the fact that like I mean, I don't know if this is replicated in archives, but I know like the statistic for like librarianship in general is like where it's like 80% white women or something. 88.

88. Is that what it is? I don't know if it's changed. I haven't looked at the statistics in a while, and I don't know how that reflects in archives. I'm assuming it's similar. It's pretty close. It's pretty close.

Yeah. Is it more? We usually say 88% in archives to you, but I don't have the statistics up. Like, I'm wondering if like, like, like, the gatekeeping and, like, the rigid enforcement of power has to do with, like, sort of reclaiming power as, like, oh, we're marginalized people. And so it's like, you know, we're reclaiming, like, this is where we enact our power. This is where we can do it.

Because, like, you know, people always ignore, especially the way white women play roles in, like, white supremacy and power structures because they think they have none, which, like, to some degree, like, yeah, like, I, you know, shock and awe. I was lived for, like, the first 20 whatever years in my life as a white woman. I know. Wow. and it's like yeah there's this whole you know there is a power differential there so it's always interesting to see how like then that reinforces power structures and librarianship

thanks for thanks for mansplaining what it's like to be a white woman I'm gonna meet myself because I'm gonna fucking die keep going with how much um well actually uh Mark I want to know what you're thinking about Jay's first question which was privacy in archives. Is there any privacy in, because privacy expectations change and there's so much bad policy on what we bring in. So we see a shift.

I mean, I think we're always going to see a shift. And it means that maybe what we retain or provide access to has to change, right? I mean, we were basically just the banter was kind of like the verbal equivalent of shit posting about privacy just now. but I think part of this is like all right from an archives perspective what is happening to like if if we think about devices like rings Alexa even even a relatively unfancy Roomba like these these devices are collecting data about our lives I know that you know I've known a bunch of people who've even despite sort of their being you know sort of concerned about privacy, they've made a conscious decision to purchase this device because they see it as a potential means to improve their quality of life. I don't understand it, but whatever, like, I want to talk. I also, you know, I've got a, I've got an iPhone, I've got an Apple Watch, I use a fitness tracker,

like, but, but I think part of it is really understanding our own expectations of like, what's going to happen with the data. Like, it, you know, and I think when it comes to privacy, archives again do reasonably well at thinking through this. They could do better, but there's a recognition that the way that information has collected has changed over time. The sort of the amount of information or the quality of that information continues to change. But you know what? Most archivists have discovered like unintentional nudes that were given to a collection. and not, you know...

Right? Like... Privacy is not anonymity. Privacy is just how and where and which and why you share things. Like, I'm enacting my right to privacy. If I share every single detail about my life, like a la Truman show or something, that's still privacy. It's just not anonymity or even, like, hiding anything. Well, it's also like, I mean, I was sort of like following this, like, this situation with Matt Gates

and like how he was tied to sex trafficking just by virtue of like, you know, his like notes or comments in like the Venmo transactions. Like it's that is a particular like that is, it's really fascinating to me as an archivist because it's like, all right, here's a record for something that, you know, sex trafficking, I am afraid to say it in this state is it's kind of mundane. Like it's terrible, but it's also it's also a thing that continues to happen in the world. right and you had this fucking knucklehead that was busted because he didn't think about what was going in a fucking Venmo note but and so like I've been thinking a lot about how like you know what does it mean to like our Venmo transactions or are like the comments on our Venmo transactions or whether we've liked something on like to particular transaction like do does that actually mean anything and what like how does this reflect our expectation or

privacy. And I don't know. I mean, it's, I think we neglect to think about how sort of these, these one-off interactions, you know, can be exploited at scale or understood at scale. Like it's, and again, like, you know, you talked about, um, Alison Mcrina before. Like, like, like, Allison is also very aware and has talked about how it's not just sort of like single instances, right, of that, like, single incidents that, like, single incidents that, are the problem. It's the fact that for better for worse, a lot of these companies that are, gathering this data are better for worse acting as data brokers as well in one form or another, whether that's actually as a data broker who's selling their information or colluding with

police departments or what have you. So it's just like, you know, I think the thing that I'm trying to figure out is what's the most offline way I can be incredibly online? Like I think about, like, or, or what's the most incredibly online way I can be offline? And, you know, like, as Jay is talking about, like, part of it is, like, where do you want to give up or seed control in terms of, like, self-hosting your infrastructure, whether that's for your personal life, or that's for your archives or your library or whatever? Like, you know, Sam Popovich, also had a blog post recently about thinking about the potential impact of BDS, like, you know, realizing that ex-Labris is a vendor that's based in Israel.

So it's like it requires us to really sort of think against the grain and really be pretty self-critical about our own practices. Like a lot of these situations benefit from the friction and the difficulty of being able to change that. So, and I'm not somebody who's like necessarily super rosy about self-hosting, but for me, it's, it's, it's not like I've become more self-conscious about what I put out on the internet or anything. It's more do I, what do I know about the means and the control of doing so, whether that's, you know. Yeah, because even with like, even if you are doing like self-hosting, like I used to work at the University of Utah and their like digital library system is completely, it's like self-built, but it's all using other software.

so it's not a vendor hosted product, but it's still using software developed by other people, even if it is free open source software, it's still made by other people. So even in these more self-hosted instances or like we have more control over this, you're still relying on something that someone else made. So unless like your in-house people can like write code

and like completely build something, like yeah, you might be self-hosted, but most of the time you're still relying on something that someone else is made and are therefore like kind of at the mercy of what someone else has made and the community that up keeps it if it is like an open source software which hopefully it is but yeah like we use ex-levis products at the university of new hampshire and i'm like you know i don't love that i'm the person who maintains our primo instance like as an anti-zionist like it's like not a fun feeling most of the time to be like you know I know where this company is and like falling with BDS principles so well at least you don't have to go to work at the gold of my year library every day

I think I was at a Robert Ely library at one time when I was working as an adjunct when I was at the University of Utah it is the Marriott library after the hotel dude because he was a Mormon fun fact always with the Mormons. Always with the Mormons on this podcast. The Mormon drop. We do. We need some sort of like Mormon drop. Something for the Book of Mormon. Oh, I was going to say orgasmo. That too. Yeah, Carrie, I was thinking about you because Chris brought over, that's my bush by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and we watched the first episode and holy shit. And I thought about you the entire time. If you, if y'all haven't seen that, don't. Like, I actually like Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Oh, boy, that was rough.

It's terrible. Oh, boy. It's bad. You remember watching it before it got canceled, yeah. Yeah. Who, holy shit. Anyway. We really, we, I think I turned it off, actually.

Yeah, and like, I like South Park. And I was like, oh, this is not. Oh, no. All I remember is the episode where they were stealing cable. Like, that was a white house. Yeah, see, like the first episode is the one where they have the, like, pro choice pro-life dinner with the fetus that survived being aborted. And that's where the entire budget went was on that little puppet.

And I was like, oh, okay. There was a lot going on in that episode. Yeah. Anyway, don't watch it, people. I'm glad we have a copy for like, you know, you know. Archival purposes. Yeah, that's what my boyfriend said. He's like, you know, if this wasn't so hard to get, I would throw this out.

because he had watched it like a decade. He was like, oh, God, I regret this decision immediately. Anyway. Well, I think we can wrap up. Jay already asked the fully automated luxury, gay, space communism one. I brought it up. I didn't ask it.

Wow, way to kill the climax. No, it's fun. We'd have come early. I mean, you know. Who says we can't? multi on this podcast, you know. That's true. That's true.

Why limit yourself? But you ask the exact question I was going to ask. So we got it. So, Mark, do you have anything you want to plug any upcoming work or your Twitter or anything like that? Or do you want people to leave you alone? Sure.

Yeah. I love to talk to people about this stuff. So you can follow me on Twitter at Anarchivist, all one word. I have a new EP coming out sometime soon whenever I can finish my fucking mixes as Carrie knows that shit can be like excruciating

so check out my bandcamp at blacktent bandcamp.com and watch my keynote from SCA which is one of the things I shared with your lovely hosts here which you can find on my website Matienzo.org. Probably, I'm not going to spell that.

So it's a link for my... I'll put it on the notes. But yeah, I really enjoy to come in here and chatting with you all. And archives are going to be the thing that changed the world, like deprofessionalized archives, de-professionalized libraries, and let's do the shit. Hell yeah. I know nothing about archives, but I'm glad you're here.

Ditto. I learned a lot today. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm a metadata cataloging person, but I was like avoiding like archives of special collection stuff like the plague. You know, no, you know, pun intended, you know, with, you know, it's probably for the best. I was in grad school. Yeah. It's probably. So the fact that I ended up doing like, you really dodged a bullet on that one. The fact that I ended up doing metadata mainly for like, you know, a digital collections is surprised me, surprised me a little bit. But, you know, it's always interesting to learn like how different archival stuff is from the more. library side of things.

It is like a completely different beast. I started my career as a cataloger, so. Yeah, like one of the, my smirk presentation was about like how different it is. And this was inspired by a project I did at Utah. That's like the difference in like thinking between archives and social collections and then like traditional library stuff with like folder level and box level and collection level versus item level metadata. It's like completely different mindset.

It's always fascinating for me to think about and talk about. It's very confusing. Yeah, it really is. Okay. Yay. Yay. Hooray. Lovely having you.

Yes, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Yes, that was lovely. Good night. I didn't pick something.